The Burn

[ObsidianFire]

It’s possible that Menphina is considerably smaller than Earth’s moon, but also closer to remain the same apparent size?

It is very possible this is the case. Especially since Menphina isn't a moon anymore then Dalamud was. Menphina, ironically given what she is a goddess of, is Zodiark's prison. So you've got two celestial bodies that are prisons for something with lots of aetheric power rotating around Hydaelyn. I am rather suspicious that the Allgans somehow figured out what Menphina really is and wondered if they could copy it.

Wonder if the same apparatus used to lift Dalamud into space had anything to do with its actual construction. Also, I'd imagine the Allagans would have probably needed to build around Bahamut somehow while he was still subdued? Hmm...

Bahamut and the Waring Triad were probably locked up in Omega's force fields like Shinryu was. I can see the Allagans building the neurolinks/Dalamud around them before rupturing Omega's fields.

One theory (that I can see being true) is the the Dawn Throne is the remains of Dalamud's launch site or construction site. Given how off any sense of scale is in video-games, the Dawn Throne could easily be as big as Dalamud was. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome to get an object into orbit is weight and Dalamud would have been very, very heavy. So it would need a lot of power to get into orbit. The Dawn Throne isn't that from from the House of the Crooked Coin, so I can see the Allagans watching the launch happen over on the Dawn Throne while they control it from the House. And both the Dawn Throne, the stone pillars around it, and the Crystal in the House have identical motifs carved/drawn on them.

Given how Allagan artifacts don't age, I can see the Dalamud launch/construction site filling with debris over five millennia until the Oronir eventually settled on top of it. It's far enough away from the Crystal Tower for the 4th Umbral Calamity to not have sunk it like the Allagan Capital and Crystal Tower were. For all that the Xaela don't have modern mechanical technology, their skill in enchanting golems like Bardam and carving semi-autonomous chuluu seems to indicate that they do have an advanced knowledge of how aether can be used to effect their surroundings. I can see that being a surviving remnant of the Allagans' knowledge of aetherochemistry, as that part of it wouldn't rely on Allagan tech to function correctly.

[Seraphor]

The dawn throne doesn't strike me as allagan. It's seemingly made entirely of stone, no advanced technology, and the ruins of the dusk throne just south of it merely display a giant stone statue.
Its not functional, least of all as a space launch facility.

[ObsidianFire]

The funny thing is, the Labyrinth of the Ancients is made almost entirely of stone. So are most of the Allgan ruins we see around Cartenau and parts of the Fractal Continuum. While Dalamud and Azys Lla are mostly made out of metal, it seems there was a time in Allag's long history that they used stone (or what looks like stone) a lot. Take out all the flashy crystal accents from the Labyrinth and it looks very similar to the stonework that makes up the Dawn Throne. It's also the case that it's been 5,000 years since the Allagan Empire fell. The Xaela would have had plenty of time to add onto it and without the power supply of the Crystal Tower, any Allagan technology would have stopped functioning millennia ago. That doesn't mean the structure would have collapsed though; Allagan architecture is notoriously hard to destroy. And the Xaela have been taking care of it for as long as they can remember.

The Dusk Throne is specifically mentioned to have been swallowed up by the desert sands, so who knows what is burred under it (see old pictures of the Sphinx for a real-world version of this). I can see the same thing happening to the Dawn Throne, only since it's on the Steppes, it doesn't get buried, but rather filled in.

[Remedi]

It does reminds me of HoH structure (the mid floors)

[Iscah]

Something that occurred to me... as we now know, the land of Azys Lla was deliberately raised from the ground to become an artificially-floating island, requiring a considerable amount of power to do so.

But why?

Or more specifically, why that land?

Why go to the effort of lifting it from the ground, when plenty of (apparently) natural floating islands already exist?* Why not just set up base somewhere in the Sea of Clouds? Is there something special about that location in particular?



* Re. natural islands - if I remember correctly, one of the moogle crafting quests mentioned that the islands are held aloft because they have large amounts of wind-aspected crystal in the rock, and the moogles are mining it but have to be careful about how much they take.

Of course it's possible the land did just have wind-crystals embedded in it already even though we can't see them - I'm pretty sure Idyllshire must be in that situation anyway. It might not be actually floating, but the rock spires under it are far too fragile to be holding the weight of the city.

[Iscah]

Also, 4.4 spoilers re. an earlier post I'd made here.....

But [Solus isn't] going to be involved in the current events.

At least, I think not.

OMG! Ascians!

CALLED IT.

It was purely a joke at the time but oh my goodness I called it.

[ObsidianFire]

One thing to take into account is how long ago the Allagan Empire was. Corthas only became majorly ice-aspected in the last five years. The Sea of Clouds (an area of that is majorly wind-aspected) is obviously older then that, but how much older? It could easily be the the case that the Sea of Clouds didn't exist yet at the time of the Allagans. It's very possible much of the Three Great Continents were very different in the Allagan Empire then they are today. Who knows how much the four Calamities since then have changed things. Although given by what we know of how much the 4th, 6th and 7th Umbral Calamity changed things, I'm going to bet that the 5th Calamity (an Ice Age) also changed things a lot.

One of the things that has always bothered me about Azys Lla is how close it is to Dravania and Sohm Al. We don't have any information about what state the Dravanian Horde was in at the time of the Allagans. Or if there was a Dravanian Horde back then for that matter. While Hrasevelgr, Nidhogg and Ratatosker seem like they could be old enough to been around at the time of the Allagans, none of Hrasevelgr's kids seem to be old enough. Form the way they act, the Dravanian conflict is the biggest problem they've ever had to tackle. So maybe Azys Lla was put where it was to also keep an eye on Sohm Al which the Dravanians (and maybe the Mercydians?) think is sacred? Or maybe Azys Lla wasn't only over Abalathia's Spine but was constantly moving around, and then with the 4th Umbral Calamity hit, that was where it stopped...

As far the Burn itself if concerned, whatever property the Allagans wanted it for could easily not exist anymore. It hasn't had aether in five thousand years so the region is probably nothing like it was back then. For all we know, the Allagans used the Burn not because of something special about it, but because of where the House of the Crooked Coin was. The bit of crystal we see there is just the tip of the iceberg. The crystal goes underground and who knows how huge it really is. I'm still wondering if it was something the Allagans specifically created to control the aetherflow of the Burn/sore up aetherial energy or if it was something non-Allagan the Allagans found there and realized they could use it to dam the flow of aether to the Burn.

[LineageRazor]

One of the things that has always bothered me about Azys Lla is how close it is to Dravania and Sohm Al. We don't have any information about what state the Dravanian Horde was in at the time of the Allagans. Or if there was a Dravanian Horde back then for that matter. While Hrasevelgr, Nidhogg and Ratatosker seem like they could be old enough to been around at the time of the Allagans, none of Hrasevelgr's kids seem to be old enough. Form the way they act, the Dravanian conflict is the biggest problem they've ever had to tackle. So maybe Azys Lla was put where it was to also keep an eye on Sohm Al which the Dravanians (and maybe the Mercydians?) think is sacred? Or maybe Azys Lla wasn't only over Abalathia's Spine but was constantly moving around, and then with the 4th Umbral Calamity hit, that was where it stopped...

I think there's little doubt that Hras, Niddy, and Rata were alive at the time of the Allagans, given that two others of the First Brood (Tiamat and Bahamut) most definitely were. Unless the seven eggs Midgardsormr brought with him hatched at wildly different times, I suppose (we don't really know how long it takes dragon eggs to hatch). Without evidence against, though, I'd guess they'd all have hatched within a year of one another. At the time of the Meracydian conflict, both Tiamat and Bahamut had reached full adulthood, and its likely that the others of the First Brood had, as well.

Why the Allagans harassed the dragons of Meracydia, and not those of Dravania, I don't know. Perhaps the Dravanians went into hiding after they saw what went down at Meracydia, or perhaps the conflict in Meracydia was costly enough to the Allagans that they put off invading Dravania until the Calamity rendered their ambitions moot. It's not out of the question to assume, though, that Azys Lla was positioned to keep an eye on the Dravanians, along with its other purposes.